Introduction to Biblical Criticism

Studying Scripture
We read different types of literature (i.e., biography, poetry, fiction) in different ways. The context of the passage is the major interpretive tool. However, we typically do not read the Bible in this way. Traditionally, we have viewed the Bible as an answer-giving talisman.

Dangers in Reading Scripture
1. To Harmonize—Harmonizing passages is an attempt to homogenize Scripture into one congruent story.
2. To Atomize—Ripping apart passages into smaller pieces.
3. To Psychologize—John Claypool once wrote, “David was weak on the relational frontier.” Is this really the point of the interpretive process?

Accuracy in the Gospels was not as important as formulating a confessional statement for the Church. We ask why it was shaped the way it was in order to understand the setting in which is was written.

A Working Definition
The website Dictionary.com defines “criticism” as “the practice of analyzing, classifying, interpreting, or evaluating literary or other artistic works.” When we talk about “biblical criticism,” we are talking about how we analyze, classify, interpret, or evaluate the Biblical texts in light of its “history and origin.”

Here, then, is an expanded definition of Biblical Criticism (per Dr. Stepp):
•It is the study of the Bible and the world around and behind its texts,
•so as best to understand what God was saying through the Biblical writers in their day and time,
•so the message can properly effect us.

There are various forms in which one perform “biblical criticism.” For our class, we will use Literary Criticism, which is also called Narrative Criticism. A close “cousin” to Literary Criticism is Rhetorical Criticism, in which the purpose is to figure our how the texts says and does what it does.

Rhetorical Criticism
Although the study of rhetoric is the study of the spoken word, it is important to remember that the written word is just as influential. John Hayes and Carl Holladay say that the “Biblical writings are ‘purposeful’ literature” and that the “Bible seeks to persuade the reader about certain truths, positions, and courses of action” (p. 92).

The purpose of rhetoric is “to persuade the audience to accept an argument …or adopt some course of action” (Hayes and Holladay, p. 92). Greek rhetoric includes 5 essential elements:
1. Invention—Planning the argument
2. Arrangement—Organizing the material
3. Style—Crafting the argument
4. Memory—Practicing the material
5. Delivery—Presenting the speech

Aristotle says that there are three rhetorical “proofs” that a speaker can focus on:
1. Ethos—Focuses on the speaker, through his/her ethical dimension, personality, and trustworthiness.
2. Pathos—Focuses on the audience, through an appeal to the emotional side of the audience and how they would react.
3. Logos—Focuses on the message, through the development of the argument and how the material was presented.

Literary Criticism
Seymour Chatman defined Literary Criticism as, “a disciplined activity that attempts to describe, study, analyze, justify, interpret, and evaluate a work of art” (p. 17-19).

• Real Author: The actual flesh and blood author of the text, yet we can never know this author from the text.
• Implied Author: This author is never the same as the Real Author. This author is the sum of the Real Author’s artistic choices related in the narrative, the image the Real Author leaves of himself or herself.
• Narrator: Theoretically identical to the Implied Author.
• Real Reader: The actual flesh and blood reader of the text.
• Implied Reader: This is the reader the text is designed to address, the Reader who responds as the Implied Author intends him or her to.
• Narratee: The one addressed by the Narrator and is theoretically the same as the Implied Reader.
• Narrative: This is the text itself, the communication between the Implied Author and the Implied Reader, which has its own event sequence and timeframe. It is comprised of Explicit Commentary and Implicit Commentary:
• Explicit Commentary: Overt communication between the Narrator and the Narratee; the things plainly stated.
• Implicit Commentary: Tacit, unspoken communication between the Narrator and the Narratee; inferences taken from the Narrative (i.e., sharp, witty irony; recurring misunderstandings; profound, moving symbolism).
• Story: The subject of the Narrative which is made up of events, characters and settings, and it is the interaction of these which forms the plot (Culpepper, p. 6-8).

References

Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978).

R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).

John H. Hayes and Carl R. Holladay, Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner’s Handbook, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987).